Gilgamesh is a verse form epic based on a historical figure, Bilgames the 5th king of Uruk. Using the Sumerian calendar, historians claim that Bilgames reigned 126 years around 2500 B.C. The epic in its earliest Sumerian literary tradition is five separate poems in their own cycles and not unified into an epic; the standard Akkadian version (another people group in the Mesopotamian delta) derived the looser series into the standard epic version.
It is obvious that the epic has had its impact on other literature. Besides having many derivatives and different tablets that extend the narrative (bring Enkidu back to life to face a harrowing adventure), the epic speaks to biblical events, Homeric derivatives, and Babylonian narratives.
Scholars have worked with the missing pieces, destroyed tablets, in order to locate a culturally consistent narrative.
The text concerns the gods asserting their power into the world to balance powers. Gilgamesh is 2/3 god and 1/3 human, Enkidu is animal and man, and Humbaba is a demigod. Clearly, the gods hear the complaints of a people, driven hard by forced labor and customarily raped by a king. These gods create a distraction for Gilgamesh in the form of the animal man. It is this balance between the deity and the animal with human between that the text is concerned with due to how they trope the history and cultural context.
In a time when things are changing from living in nature to living along-side or over nature, these figures trope the cultural anxieties of the time: urbanization and the destruction of forests. The development of the narrative over time heightens this trope. The trapper who lives off of nature sends a temple prostitute to sleep with Enkidu. The presence of those from the urban landscape refine the animal into a companion. Eventually, Enkidu will become a sacrifice for the gods. Spiritual figures then follow, especially as Gilgamesh must face the sage Utnaphishtim. The snake is part of the challenge, the epic test.
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